Huge expense & horrible driver. Can you believe that he tried to make a pass at me?!?!?! I was SOOOO pissed off since he made me feel extremely uncomfortable. OK, so I admit that it was partially my fault - I wanted to cut down of my spending, so I asked to share a room with him. (FYI - Hiring a car in Sri Lanka entails you to pay for the driver's accommodation as well). Geez....I am never doing that again. In the end, I just wanted to get away from this guy that I had him drop me off at the airport 12 hours before my flight! Sitting around in the airport (even a Colombo airport) was much better than having to look at him. Argh!
Anyways, back to more enjoyable moments....
Sri Lanka is fantastic! It's actually much more relaxed and developed (and unfortunately more expensive as well) than I originally imagined it to be. I thought it was going to be very similar to India, but it totally wasn't. Except for the food, which is mainly rice & curry. It's such a shame that tourists are staying away from this country - in most of the sights, I only saw a handful of foreigners. One guide told me that he used to give 5 tours a day; now he's down to 5 a month.
I started my sightseeing in the inner tea country of Ella. The place is very similar to the hilly
countrysides of Japan with the tea and everything. The main differences being that the plantations are vaster here and the good products are all exported to Europe and the US. I was supposed to take the observation train from here to Kandy (heard positive reviews about the beautiful scenery), but the rain was causing major delays, and so I stuck with the car and damn driver.The next 3 days were spent in the "cultural triangle" area, where Sri Lanka's ancient cities are located. Since I'm falling very behind on my blog entries, please let me keep it short : )
Kandy - Beautiful city surrounded by hills and centered around a small lake. Had a nightmarish time finding a place to stay here - all the cheap places were somewhere on top of the hill and I did NOT want to have to walk down to the city to find food and internet (FYI - at this point in time, internet was a very high priority item for me. I was in a desperate search for a safari trip in Africa for the following week). Kandy is famous for its Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, where Buddha's tooth is supposedly located. You don't get to see the tooth, so who knows. According to my guidebook, Japanese and Thai citizens are allowed to go into the sacred room itself (but still no tooth viewing) for donating tons of money to the temple. When I asked the guards and guides about it though, they didn't know anything. Oh well. The structure was nice to walk through so I was happy. While in Kandy, I met a Japanese woman volunteering in Colombo through JICA. She's been in Colombo for over a year, and told me about all the bombings that took place around her. Pretty scary. And her friend was so fascinated with me for some reason - she kept wanting to take photos with me and made me promise to visit her in Shiga once I ended my trip in Japan!
Sigiriya - This is a huge rock in the middle of a forest, with a palace at the top. You climb over 1,500 steps to get to the top, passing through several cave drawings (they were wonderful!).
To be honest, the climb was extremely anticlimatical. For some reason, I assumed that there would be a palace at the top. But when you actually get there, it's all empty space - only the foundations remain : ( And I ran into a giant squirrel during my hike...not a pleasant creature. It looked so awkward. 
Polonnaruwa - One of Sri Lanka's ancient cities. If I recall correctly, it used to house the buddha's tooth before it was moved to Kandy. Numerous ruins are spread throughout the city, most of them just foundations and columns. I think UNESCO is in the process of rebuilding many of the structures, but I can attest that they haven't gotten too far. Although I refused a guide, the annoying driver took it upon himself to hire one for me...and ended up paying for it too. On hindsight, I think it was a good thing that I had a guide...the place is so massive and spread apart, I don't think I would've been able to navigate on my own. Too many places to see here, but I think the highlights were the Buddha statues which had nice, delicate features.
Dambulla - Site of the cave temples. Monks prefer to meditate in quiet, isolated places. Hence, to view the temples, you have to climb up a hill. Yes...lots of stairs. I'm not going to complain though, as the place was fantastic! There are several caves you can enter. In each one, you find several buddha statues (which did not interest me too much) surrounded by the most colorful wall paintings. I really like how ancient Sri Lankan dwellers painted their own walls and ceilings. There are a lot of mating monkeys here as well. 
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